McCarthy ’11 Named All-America Scholar

Thomas McCarthy. (photo by DSPics.com)

Jul 21, 2011

NORMAN, Okla. – Thomas McCarthy '11, who captained the Yale men's golf team to an Ivy League Championship victory and its best season in recent memory, was named a Cleveland Golf/Srixon All-America Scholar by the Golf Coaches Association of America on Wednesday.

The honor, bestowed upon just 128 Division I golfers around the country, is determined based on a number of eligibility factors. A golfer must first of all be a junior or senior, compete in at least two full years at the collegiate level, and participate in 70-percent of his team's competitive rounds. In addition, the player must maintain a stroke-average below 76 and a cumulative GPA above 3.2.

As a senior this past year, McCarthy has not just met all these criteria, but gone beyond them. Maintaining a 73.4 shot average across 26 rounds of competitive play, he was named to the first-team All-Ivy after a second-place finish at the Ivy League Championships.

Other strong performances throughout the season came at the Princeton Invitational, where he finished in second place, and the George Washington Invitational, where he tied for third.

But it was as a captain that McCarthy also showed his skill. Under his leadership, two other players, incoming senior captain Jeffrey Hatten and rising junior Bradley Kushner, also made the first-team All Ivy, and rising sophomore Sam Bernstein was named the Ivy League Rookie of the Year.

The team's overall performance, meanwhile, was also testament to his year at the helm. Wins at the Ivy League Championship and Princeton Invitational and second-place finishes at the Macdonald Cup and George Washington Invitational were spearheaded by McCarthy's gutsy game.

McCarthy's leadership came in tandem with the coaching of head coach Colin Sheehan '97, whose performance this past season was acknowledged earlier this month when he was named the Northeast Region Coach of the Year.